Jabong seeks CXOs to power next phase

Once the top team of about 5-6 positions are in place, Sinha said he will also look to hire someone for the position of the CEO to fill in the shoes of the founders.Harsimran Julka | ET Bureau | August 10, 2015, 08:43 IST

NEW DELHI: Online fashion retailer Jabong is looking to create a second line of leadership to brace up and fight rivals such as Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal that have strengthened core teams with several toplevel hiring in the last six months.

“We are looking to hire a chief technology officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief operating officer and strong product leaders to lead the company in its next phase of growth,” Jabong cofounder and managing director Praveen Sinha told ET. “While some of the positions will be filled from inside Jabong, for others we have been on the lookout since last year,” he said.

Once the top team of about 5-6 positions are in place, Sinha said he will also look to hire someone for the position of the CEO to fill in the shoes of the founders. He, however, added that he would not leave his leadership role anytime soon. “But if you ask me whether I would be running Jabong for next 30 years. The answered would also be a ‘No’,” he said. Sinha’s comments come at a time when there have been reports that Rocket Internet, which owns Jabong, plans to shift cofounders Sinha and Arun Chandra Mohan, currently CEO of Jabong, to new roles within the company.

Sinha said he has strong support of Jabong’s investors to strengthen its core team. A former McKinsey consultant, Sinha was running a few ventures including home solutions firm Aqua Brim before cofounding Jabong. He has also invested in ventures such as on-demand services provider Zimmber, laundry startup Wassup and dating app Tryst.

Sinha and Mohan started the Gurgaon-based fashion portal in 2012 along with Lakshmi Potluri, Manu Jain and Mukul Bafana. While Potluri left to start ecommerce platform Shopify, Jain is now India head for Xiaomi. Bafana is chief product officer at Arvind Internet.

The new search by Jabong for top leaders comes at a time when Snapdeal has hired half a dozen executives from companies such as Coca Cola, Airtel, P&G and Unilever to its top team. Flipkart has hired executives from companies such as Motorola, Google, Yahoo and Amazon to its top leadership.